Mr Cat Dog
Frasier says it best
- 11,344
- Posts
- 20
- Years
- Age 34
- London, UK
- Seen Sep 29, 2017
This is probably going to turn out to be quite a long post, so for those who have a tendency to think to themselves "God, Cat Dog... just ask a question so I can bump up my post-count some more!", here's the tl;dr question: Should you trust game reviews? Especially with regard to the marketing campaigns put behind 'good' games? I'd appreciate it if people read what prompted me to ask this question, but I can't force you, so... meh.
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A few weeks ago, pop-culture website The A.V. Club reviewed Uncharted 3 for the PS3 and gave it a 'C'-grade (on an A-F scale, so it was deemed 'not great'; you can read the review here). That, in turn, prompted many angry responses on internet comment sites: some went as far as to suspect the reviewer was a shill for Microsoft for vocalizing his views so forthright. Having not played any of the Uncharted series, I can't comment upon the points raised in the individual review in question, but the response seems, from an outsider's perspective, strangely passionate, given that none of the commenters had played the game at the time of writing.
I brushed this under the rug for a week or so, but when listening to a podcast today that discusses this very review (from the same website), it got me thinking a bit about game reviewing. The podcast segment in question opens with the following statement:
Video game reviews can be surprisingly controversial: even more so than film or music. Video game publishers have a reputation for punishing media for giving bad reviews, and heavily promoted games are expected to get good reviews.
The discussion then moves on to the subject of promotion and reviews. A heavily-promoted summer blockbuster film (like, say, Transformers) is not expected to get great - or even good - reviews from film critics; something like a new Zelda game, on the other hand, is expected not only to sell like hotcakes but get amazing reviews from places like IGN and GameSpot. It seems like much more pressure is placed upon the shoulders of video game reviewers to write positive things about a expensive games and games with large marketing budgets or risk losing reviewing privileges of future games by the same publishers and studios. (For example, 'punishment' could include not being sent review copies, un-invitations to things like E3 events etc.)
All of this leads me to ask, can one really trust gaming reviews of high-profile games if there's such pressure on reviewers to 'inflate' their positive opinion to keep being able to do what they do? Looking at high-profile titles, there does seem to be a relative unanimity as to the level of respect that titles get; there seems to be much less dissent in the video game world, and a desire among readers to have a sense of validation in their gaming choices. Indeed, film and music reviewers, if anything, are too harsh in their reviews; this is either an elitist belief that old music/movies are supremely better than the new, or just a desire to tear into stuff they have no strong feelings for. It's exceedingly rare, for example, to see a film review with 100% on Rotten Tomatoes or Metacritic or something, and yet high-profile video games can often receive 9.0+ on an occasion.
Which links me back to the question originally posited: Should you trust game reviews? Especially with regard to the marketing campaigns put behind 'good' games? (If you've read all the way down to here, thanks... I hope I haven't bored you silly!)
-~-~-~
A few weeks ago, pop-culture website The A.V. Club reviewed Uncharted 3 for the PS3 and gave it a 'C'-grade (on an A-F scale, so it was deemed 'not great'; you can read the review here). That, in turn, prompted many angry responses on internet comment sites: some went as far as to suspect the reviewer was a shill for Microsoft for vocalizing his views so forthright. Having not played any of the Uncharted series, I can't comment upon the points raised in the individual review in question, but the response seems, from an outsider's perspective, strangely passionate, given that none of the commenters had played the game at the time of writing.
I brushed this under the rug for a week or so, but when listening to a podcast today that discusses this very review (from the same website), it got me thinking a bit about game reviewing. The podcast segment in question opens with the following statement:
Video game reviews can be surprisingly controversial: even more so than film or music. Video game publishers have a reputation for punishing media for giving bad reviews, and heavily promoted games are expected to get good reviews.
The discussion then moves on to the subject of promotion and reviews. A heavily-promoted summer blockbuster film (like, say, Transformers) is not expected to get great - or even good - reviews from film critics; something like a new Zelda game, on the other hand, is expected not only to sell like hotcakes but get amazing reviews from places like IGN and GameSpot. It seems like much more pressure is placed upon the shoulders of video game reviewers to write positive things about a expensive games and games with large marketing budgets or risk losing reviewing privileges of future games by the same publishers and studios. (For example, 'punishment' could include not being sent review copies, un-invitations to things like E3 events etc.)
All of this leads me to ask, can one really trust gaming reviews of high-profile games if there's such pressure on reviewers to 'inflate' their positive opinion to keep being able to do what they do? Looking at high-profile titles, there does seem to be a relative unanimity as to the level of respect that titles get; there seems to be much less dissent in the video game world, and a desire among readers to have a sense of validation in their gaming choices. Indeed, film and music reviewers, if anything, are too harsh in their reviews; this is either an elitist belief that old music/movies are supremely better than the new, or just a desire to tear into stuff they have no strong feelings for. It's exceedingly rare, for example, to see a film review with 100% on Rotten Tomatoes or Metacritic or something, and yet high-profile video games can often receive 9.0+ on an occasion.
Which links me back to the question originally posited: Should you trust game reviews? Especially with regard to the marketing campaigns put behind 'good' games? (If you've read all the way down to here, thanks... I hope I haven't bored you silly!)
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